


Plague Ship

by AssortedGeekery



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy - All Media Types
Genre: 5 Times Fic, Alcohol, Gen, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Mentions of Sex, Poison, Vomit, all the vomit, children are plague ships, yondu is one unlucky bastard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 03:46:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10958982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AssortedGeekery/pseuds/AssortedGeekery
Summary: Five times it was Peter's fault and one time that it wasn't.Or the reason Peter didn't get eaten in his first week aboard the Eclector.





	Plague Ship

**Author's Note:**

> Written for squidbiscuit over on Tumblr, inspired by Yondu being...well, Yondu and an old pic Squid had in which it's implied that a Peter-carried stomach bug is why Yondu wouldn't let the kid get eaten...he was too sick to even think about food.

Peter Quill was eight years old when the Ravagers picked him up, and just a month into the fall semester of third grade. A time when every student in the school was passing around an assortment of colds and flu. This phenomenon was not unique to Terran biology or Terran schools, but it was a little unusual for the age range and not something the Ravagers considered until much, much later. 

 

Less than two standard days after taking Peter, the crew of the  _ Eclector _ was surprised to find their hands full of a small, pink creature who spewed any time they tried to make it eat, cried when left alone, hollered and kicked and bit when kept company and whose body temperature was significantly higher than it had been when they’d arrived. This turned into their little pink passenger crying  _ most _ of the time and having to be cleaned in the refresher  _ three times _ because he was too exhausted to manage more than sitting up before he puked. Yondu and Kraglin shared this job, one holding him out at arm’s length until he was clean while the other handled clothing. Terrans had no protective scales, thicker patches of skin, fur, plating, chitin or anything else useful…virtually everything had to be covered. The tailor refused to do a thing for him until  _ after _ he quit spewing everywhere, so they improvised with whatever they could get onto or wrap around his body. 

It stopped after a couple of days, which the crew took to mean that it was just a juvenile Terran adjusting to the food and conditions in space. Made sense. Terrans hadn’t figured out space flight yet, so they weren’t accustomed to those sorts of things. 

 

The day after Peter Quill had become the smallest, fastest, angriest little asshole on the ship, Kraglin almost climbed over the back of his chair to run for the head and puke copiously. He didn’t quite make it, so a good portion of the crew hanging around the life deck became abruptly aware of his situation right outside the head. Anyone hanging around the crew decks who hadn’t already heard found out when Kraglin, staggering to his cabin after being shouted off the bridge by Yondu, didn’t make it to the head on  _ that _ level either.

But they didn’t actually  _ realize _ what had happened until the following day, when Yondu rewrote part of the duty roster to keep himself in the pilot’s seat for the better part of twelve hours. And he  _ curled _ in it, a rare position for a man who was stiff from years of abuse and hard work  _ and _ usually a stickler for protocol on duty. But it was a particularly large chair and Yondu was fully capable of getting his feet up into it and tucking himself into a loose ball. When Horuz went to peer around the back of it, he found their captain drenched in sweat and clutching his middle, having gone a somewhat moldy-looking shade of blue-grey. 

“Captain?”

“Shuddap.”

“Captain, buncha the crew been askin’…can we eat that kid we picked up the other night? Seein’ as how we don’t seem t’ be taking him where we were told and all…”

Yondu responded with an uncomfortably wet belch. “Ain’t nobody on this ship eatin’ a gawddamn thing tonight,” he growled. 

“….seriously?

“ _ Seriously _ . Now git  _ urrrp _ out.”

Horuz obeyed, but skittered back a little while later to leave a full bottle of water within arm’s reach. 

Crew mutterings got Kraglin, pale and wobbly but definitely over whatever had been bothering him the day before, to pay their captain a visit around dinner time, when growling stomachs had most of those on duty demanding to know why no one was allowed to eat. 

Yondu was sitting up, one arm still across his belly, the water half gone. He looked, Kraglin noted, rather like death. 

“Captain?”

“Th’ flark’d I say ‘bout gittin’ out?” Yondu demanded. 

“Dunno. Weren’t me you said it to,” Kraglin said mildly. “Think the kid gave us some kinda plague.”

Yondu nodded minutely. “He mighta done.”

“You gonna stay up here for third shift?”

“….if I don’t, won’t make it far ‘fore I puke m’self unconscious,” Yondu admitted. 

Kraglin nodded, understanding. “I’ll getcha a bucket. Runs through ya quick, at least.”

* * *

 

Peter started trying to cook two years later. Something his grandfather had said, apparently, about becoming a man at that age and what a man ought to be able to do. His efforts were, to say the least…unpleasant, although that might have been caused by his having to learn about entirely new food substances every time he wanted to make a meal.

Since Peter was Yondu’s fault and mostly his and Kraglin’s problem, captain and first mate were Peter’s test subjects as he learned to cook whatever they might have rattling around the galley at the time. Most of the time, his efforts were just burned. 

But one day, whatever it was Peter served the both for breakfast came out purple. It looked like eggs…scrambled- a format both Yondu and Kraglin felt was bordering on sacrilege but which Peter insisted was the best way to eat eggs- and a really lovely lilac color beside some kind of fried meat and a pile of assorted fruit chunks. It smelled…edible? Yondu poked at his portion cautiously, wondering what it had been before Peter had gotten to it. He only sampled it when Kraglin did, the skinny man pausing a moment before shoveling the rest down with a satisfied grunt. 

“Weird color,” Kraglin declared. “But that weren’t half bad, kid.”

If it hadn’t killed Kraglin, it probably wouldn’t kill him either. Yondu ate the purple stuff as quickly as he could, shuddering at the taste- almost fermented, and not in a good, boozy way.

 

An hour or so later, Yondu was elbow deep in machinery that needed work when a vicious cramp rolled through his belly, doubling him over so fast he smacked his forehead on the side of the engine casing on the way down. With it came a suddenly rising tide of nausea, intense enough to fill his mouth with sour saliva in a matter of moments. He sank onto his knees, one hand clutching at the side of his project for support, the other pressed hard against his stomach as if it might calm it. As another cramp twisted his gut into knots, he imagined he could almost feel it move under his hand. 

Couldn’t puke here, getting it cleaned up would be hell. There would be hosing to do, and scrubbing, and the raised parts of the floor plating- anti skid surfaces- would have to be cleaned around. Yondu swallowed hard and held very still, trying to breathe evenly as his stomach surged. A couple of wet, sour burps helped ease off on the pressure a little, but the last brought a little splatter of fluid up the back of his throat and he gagged, barely managing to gulp it all back again.

“Yondu? Yondu, Horuz says….uh…” Small feet clattered up the stairs and across the floor behind Yondu. Peter. Of  _ course _ . “Yondu, are you okay?”

He grunted at the boy and tried to wave him away with the hand he’d been using for support. Without it to keep him steady, he swayed dangerously. Peter’s small feet danced briefly near his knee. 

“I’m gonna get Kraglin,” he announced, and fled.

 

One of these days, Yondu was going to get Kraglin to stop moving so quietly.  _ How _ the man managed to do it was beyond Yondu- it wasn’t as though his species was known for it, and Ravagers weren’t known for it either. He was just a soft-footed sort of person with a loud voice to make up for it. 

A loud voice he used right behind Yondu with no warning. 

“Captain, the kid said you was-“

Yondu almost jumped. His stomach certainly did, and the breakfast Peter had insisted he eat came back up through nose and mouth, thick and hot and burning and infinitely more fermented-tasting now than it had been on the way down. Behind him, Peter yelped in disgust and fled. 

When the heaving eased up, Yondu looked up to find Kraglin standing over him with hands on hips and a towel over his shoulder, an expression of resignation on his face. 

“Breakfast?” he asked, hesitantly kneeling to offer the towel to Yondu. 

“ _ Breakfast _ ,” Yondu agreed. He took the towel Kraglin offered, wiped the worst of the mess from his face, and accepted the hand up. 

Kraglin pulled him upright. The space around him spun wildly, like the tops he had played and fought with as a boy. Yondu hiccuped. Kraglin paled. 

“Wait, lemme just…don’t…”

“ _ Hrrllp!” _

 

Several days later, Yondu spent some of his down time on the data-net and determined that the purple stuff Peter had fed him was indeed an egg. Sort of. It came from an insectoid species somewhere in the swampy middle of an edge planetary system and it was inherently toxic to dozens of species. The list included Centaurians and somehow managed to exclude every other species currently serving in his crew. 

Kraglin politely made a list of potentially fatal foodstuffs for Peter to reference in the future. 

* * *

 

Less than a year later, during Peter’s haphazard and decidedly unorthodox flight training, the kid managed to set them on a series of jumps that left them stranded on a rocky moon with nothing to do except wait until Kraglin’s promised rescue party arrived. This put Yondu and his annoying Terran charge alone in close quarters for several days at least. The moon itself was habitable, and had some plant and animal life, but it was boring as hell and too much work to make any of the wildlife edible. So they broke out the ration packs and tried to stay at opposite ends of the ship. 

Not easy when it was one of the smaller M-ships. So small that Yondu, with his preference for being as far off the floor as possible while he slept, had rigged a hammock over the helm.

Even harder when, on the second day, Yondu woke up to hear whimpering from the direction of the bunk. Groaning, he hopped to the floor and plodded into the back to find…. _ well _ .

Peter sat on the floor of the head, clutching his stomach and whimpering into the toilet. Judging by the pressure marks on his legs and the chill-pimples all over him, he’d been there for some time. 

“Whatssa matter, boy?”

“M-my stomach,” Peter blubbered. He’d mostly gotten out of the habit of crying over everything, but injury and similar things tended to restart the waterworks. 

Yondu shrugged. “Shouldn’ta tried eatin’ that thing you found, then.” Earlier in the day, Peter had been sampling some form of fruit that had been so hard it hadn’t been worth the effort to finish. Yondu had made fun of him for gnawing on it like a runty Orloni. “You make a mess, you clean it up.”

He went back to his hammock. 

 

But several hours later, he woke again. The ship was quiet. Peter had stopped whimpering. There was nothing moving outside the ship that he could hear, and nothing he could see through the glass he hung near. So what had it been?

His stomach gave a lazy roll, and Yondu became abruptly aware of how hot he was, sticky with sweat even though they had nonessential life support dialed down and the moon’s climate was mild. His throat was tight, so tight even the base of his tongue ached, and his mouth tasted like licking a battery terminal. 

He was going to throw up.  _ Now _ .

Yondu made it out of his hammock and to the floor, staggering towards the head with one hand pressed to his heaving belly and the other trailing along the wall as a guide. 

Peter was  _ still there _ , asleep against the toilet. Yondu snagged him by the scruff, not so much tossing him aside as he did shove him out of the way, and managed to get his head over the bowl before the evening’s ration pack came back up. The sound woke Peter, who scrabbled at his legs until Yondu straightened, then dove in between his knees to puke again. 

 

It was far too long before they both settled, crammed in together on opposite walls with their legs stretched out between, both just a lean away from the much-abused toilet. 

“Mighta been the ration packs,” Yondu rasped. They had a jug of water between them, pushed back and forth as needed, and a couple of towels. Doc wouldn’t approve, but it was the best either one of them could reach. 

Peter nodded miserably, hugging himself. He had a towel around his shoulders, but he continued to shiver. Which made no sense to Yondu, who was so hot that he would have stripped completely naked if he’d had the energy for it. He’d’ve peeled his own  _ skin _ off to cool down, and that was saying something, coming from an equatorial jungle as he had, and being reared in a hot, all-enveloping pouch as all proper Centaurians were. 

_ Ugh _ . Just the thought made the heat worse. Objectively, Yondu knew he had a fever. Peter probably did too, but Terrans were strange things and chilled while their guts baked. At least sometimes. If he knew one thing about Peter’s biology it was that it seemed set up to drive anyone who tried to understand it flarking  _ insane _ .

“….aren’t you  _ cold _ ?” Peter asked. 

Yondu grunted at him. “ _ No _ , and you shouldn’t be either. Gotta  _ fever _ kid, ain’t s’pposed to be  _ cold.” _

Peter gathered his limbs under himself and scooted across the narrow bit of floor, tucking himself and his towel under Yondu’s arm before the older man could stop him. He was small and bony and sweat-sticky and he  _ smelled _ , but he was still young enough to make Yondu’s pouch feel gapingly empty, an awkward feeling when the child beside him was neither small enough to fit nor an appropriate species. Once- just  _ once-  _ in the first few months after they had taken Peter, the little scrap of Terran had managed to crawl into Yondu’s suspended bed-nest. Mostly asleep, Yondu had stuffed Peter into his pouch…as much of Peter as would fit, which was his head and shoulders. Three kicks to the jaw had gotten Yondu awake enough to realize what had happened, and a fourth had broken his nose before he got Peter out again. 

“Gerroff,” Yondu complained, attempting to scrape Peter off his ribcage. 

“ _ No _ .”

“I said  _ off _ .”

The ensuing grappling was slippery with sweat, slow and stiff with fever and cramped quarters, and even more awkward than expected. It ended with Peter vomiting water and bile into Yondu’s lap and Yondu leaning over him to do the same into the toilet. 

By the time Kraglin got to them, they’d given up arguing and slept together in a nest of whatever they could drag in on the cramped, chilly floor of the head, Yondu gone pale with exhaustion and dehydration, Peter still fever-flushed but in considerably better condition.  _ His _ species liked to  _ sleep _ to recover from illness. 

 

Later inspection of shipboard emergency ration packs determined that nearly a quarter of the stock they kept was spoiled, which explained the puke-fest. Yondu hardly cared. He just hooked a bucket over the edge of his nest back in his cabin, crawled into said nest, and waited for it all to be over. 

 

* * *

 

When Peter was fourteen- and getting tall, which made the tailor complain furiously- he came back from a job with some kind of bug. It left the  _ Eclector _ ’s pet Terran balled up in his bunk asleep, clutching his stomach and belching ominously for a day or so. Nothing to worry about, then. 

Until it started to spread. Terrans might have come standard with no physical protection and little innate physical talent, but they were very good at playing down pain and suffering. The crew had learned this through a series of injuries over the years…Peter had walked around on a broken leg for  _ two days _ before someone had noticed it, and it was generally understood that if Peter was bleeding, odds were good it was at least three times worse than he claimed it was. No one had tested the theory on illness…

But with a full third of the crew in and out of the medical suite with raging fever, dehydration and worse, they  _ knew _ . Terrans would lie through their teeth about illness and injury and make it believable…which was great until a virus a Terran said was ‘annoying’ turned out to be gut-wrenchingly horrible. They found a quiet backwater planet to orbit around and settled in to wait the virus out. 

Yondu managed to avoid it, somehow. He spent two days feeling queasy, then the rest of their stint in orbit working, yelling at those who had been deemed recovered but who were trying to get out of work a little longer, and making supply runs down to the planet surface. It was largely uninhabited, but had a lot of resources- including clean water and easily preserved foodstuffs- that they could use. 

But they’d left orbit less than a day ago, all crew cleared, and Yondu was in the middle of a sprint down a gangway near the helm, both hands clamped over his mouth. He was fairly sure that he wasn’t going to make it, but flark it all, he was going to  _ try _ .

And he had  _ tried _ to stick it out at the helm, for the better part of second shift. The belching had started less than two hours into the shift. The nausea had kicked in an hour after that. The cramps had been there from the beginning. He had hunched further and further in his chair as the time had passed, ignoring the looks the current Helm Crew was giving him every time he burped. Six hours in, there had started to be little splatters of fluid at the back of his throat when he belched, hot and sour-tasting, and he had to swallow hard to make  _ that _ go away.

He almost made it to shift change before Horuz plonked an empty case that usually held explosive charges down beside the chair. Even if Yondu hadn’t been swallowing back his lunch already, the look Horuz gave him left no question as to what the case was for. And the  _ thought _ made Yondu’s stomach do a barrel roll. He almost tripped over the case in his hurry to clear the bridge entirely. 

Fluid was dripping between Yondu’s fingers by the time he neared the head- why was the flarking thing so far from the helm?- and the gagging had started. 

“Captain!” Kraglin grabbed him by the sleeve and yanked, sending him careering sideways and…not into the wall, but through the doorway to the head, which he had nearly overshot in his rush. 

He made it, knees slamming hard onto gridded deck plating- and he felt skin tear-, before his guts did their level best to escape his body through the mouth. Somewhere in the middle of what might have been the most violent bout of puking Yondu could remember having, something near his eye made a sort of popping sensation.

“How’d ya hold it off so long?” Kraglin asked from somewhere behind him. Yondu twitched, swore, and puked some more. Where the stuff he was puking up  _ came from _ , he had no idea. “Everyone already had it. Even Taserface.” It went unsaid that Taserface was so filthy that his immune system had overdeveloped into something like a surface-to-orbit defense system to compensate. It took a lot to breach those defenses. 

Yondu gasped a few curses at him in the lull before the heaving started again, empty this time but no less violent. 

Kraglin squeezed in beside him and awkwardly patted the flat stretch of his fin implant. When Yondu managed to look up and scowl at him, he raised an eyebrow. 

“Y’ gone and bloodied your eye,” he remarked. “’s gone all blue ‘round the red bit. No white.”

Yondu suggested he do a few unnatural and anatomically unlikely things to himself. 

 

Two shifts later, Peter bypassed the locks on Yondu’s cabin door and scuttled into the darkened cabin. Yondu lay curled in his nest, which Kraglin had forcefully lowered despite Yondu’s protests. It wasn’t more than a meter off the floor, which annoyed him, but Kraglin’s point that that height was much easier to deal with if he had to make a run for it was a good one. He’d hate to get bile on anything absorbent. He still remembered cleaning up around Peter during those first days aboard the  _ Eclector _ .

“Yondu?” In the midst of Terran puberty, Peter’s voice cracked and yawed and squeaked at random. It was smoother in the half-whisper he used in the dim cabin, but still painful to the ears. 

“ _ What _ ?”

“Doc sent you some…stuff. And I got water.”

“‘ve  _ got _ water, boy. Git.”

Peter’s feet shuffled against the deck plating. “Doc said I had to make sure you got it, and take it. And…uh…see your knees, I guess? Kraglin said somethin’ ‘bout that…”

“Don’tchu worry about my flarkin’  _ knees _ , git out ‘fore I let Taserface make a stew outta ya,” Yondu growled. 

Peter shuffled. “But they said-”

“I don’t care  _ what _ they said, I’m your captain and you’ll do as I say!”

Peter tossed the bag of supplies and water at him before storming out. It hit Yondu  squarely in the gut. He made a wheezy sound and grabbed frantically for his bucket.

 

Kraglin let himself into Yondu’s cabin an or hour so later, and turned the light on to the highest setting. Yondu groaned and pulled a blanket over his head, swearing indistinctly. 

“Pete says you din’t take the meds Doc sent,” Kraglin said accusingly. “And you din’t let him look at your legs. Bloodied ‘em up real good too, and that floor ain’t clean.”

“What’re you, m’ mother?” Yondu snapped. “Flark off.”

Kraglin folded his arms and waited patiently until Yondu turned enough to look at him. “Ain’t leavin’ ‘til you do what needs done. Ain’t turning the light back off neither. Where’s the bag Pete brought?”

“Dunno. Don’t care.”

“Said he threw it atcha.”

Yondu growled, but groped around in his nest a moment before flinging the bag back at Kraglin. For a disappointing change, his first mate caught it before it could hit him in the face. Yondu pulled the blanket back over his head while Kraglin rummaged. 

What followed was twenty-odd minutes of arguing, swearing, negotiating and some very careful wrestling. At one point, Yondu even  _ bit _ Kraglin, who yelped and cuffed him around the back of the head. 

Not exactly standard bedside manner, but Ravagers were far from standard. And in the end, Kraglin managed to hold Yondu down with a combination of better grip and Yondu being too tired to fight back, then forced a dose of something gelatinous and overly sweet into his mouth. Yondu very nearly heaved it right back up, but that would have ended in choking on the water Kraglin forced after it, so he kept it down out of sheer desire not to die on aspirated medicine. While he wheezed and coughed, Kraglin went after the shredded skin on his knees. 

“Doc says she wouldn’t care none, ‘cept you did this in the head,” he explained, roughly swiping something acrid smelling over the torn skin. “And she says she don’t need t’ deal with you gettin’ infected and losin’ movement in the joints ‘cuz you got cut up in the dirtiest place in the ship. Too much work for her if ya did, she said.”

“She c’n go take a long walk outta the airlocks,” Yondu muttered, trying and failing to kick Kraglin in the face. He just wasn’t at the right angle for it, and didn’t have the energy to move into a better position. He’d’ve tried kneeing him instead, but he had a feeling that the stuff Kraglin was smearing over the acrid, burning liquid was probably sticky. Gluing his kneecap to his first mate’s face wouldn’t be at all satisfying. 

“If you lose a leg because it went an’ rotted off at the knee, the crew’ll want you gone and then I’ll hafta deal with it all. Don’t wanna do that. Too much work.  _ There _ .” He slapped some sort of dressing over Yondu’s knees. “Done as it’s gonna be. Don’t go pickin’ ‘em off or I’ll hafta come back in here and do it again.”

“Just  _ try _ it.”

“Already wrestled you down once,” Kraglin said lightly. “I c’n do it again if I gotta.” He hopped off the edge of the nest, scooping the doctor’s bag onto his shoulder. “Take those meds again at shift change. I’ll know if you din’t.”

 

Yondu didn’t, and fully expected Kraglin to come charging in unbidden after the echoing  _ bong _ of the shift change alarm had faded down the halls. Instead, he was left alone, cramping, shivering and swallowing uncomfortably, in the dark. 

He’d nearly managed to  _ finally _ doze off when the door opened. It wasn’t Kraglin’s tall, narrow, angular body silhouetted in the doorway but Peter instead, much shorter but already broader than the first mate. He had the makings of a big man, Yondu had noted. That might come in handy when he was grown. But for now, he was in the room again and Yondu didn’t want that. 

“ _ Git _ .”

Peter ignored him entirely, letting the door close behind him and shuffling across the room to crawl onto the edge of Yondu’s nest. 

Yondu shoved weakly at him, scowling into the dim light of the headlamp Peter had found somewhere. Probably fixed it up himself, knowing him. 

“Kraglin said you needed more meds,” he murmured, bracing against the side of the nest so that Yondu’s shoving didn’t tip him over backwards. “An’ that this is my fault an’ I should be the one t’ take care of you.”

He had the bag with him, and as Yondu watched, the took out the jar of whatever awful, sweet crap it was that Kraglin had forced on him before. 

“You are  _ not _ gettin’ that shit anywhere  _ near _ m’ mouth, boy.”

“ _ Kraglin _ says I c’n prolly pin you if I hafta,” Peter informed him, putting the bag aside. “An’ I don’t wanna because you’ll prolly puke all over me, but he says he’ll let Doc keep me awhile if I don’t do this an’ I’m more afraid of her than I am of you.” He said it very simply, and Yondu could understand the sentiment; the ship’s doctor was a terrifying female...something. No one asked where she was from, because pushing her buttons the wrong way could end in the tanks where she kept spare parts for accidents. If she said something needed to be done, it would be done. If her track record for being right about dire consequences hadn’t been perfect, this might not have been the case, but as it was...it was always better to do what she said. Yondu could override her, and he had in the past, but for something as petty as some stomach bug carried onto the ship by a  _ kid _ ?

“You’d better not.”

Peter uncapped the jar and peered at him. “You’re a stupid color.”

“Nah,  _ you’re _ a stupid color. Pink’s the worst choice out there.”

“Ain’t like I  _ picked _ pink,” Peter muttered. “But you aren’t regular blue. You’re like...moldy blue. Here. Kraglin said one scoop.” He held out a small plastic scoop with the gelatinous medication in it. In the light from his headlamp, it was a lurid purple, and it jiggled at the slightest movement.

Yondu made a sick sound, wet and low in his throat, and leaned away from the stuff. 

“ _ No _ .”

“Yondu, you gotta!”

“I am  _ not _ putting th-  _ glrp _ !”

Peter stuffed the scoop into Yondu’s mouth mid-word and dumped the goop on his tongue. 

Yondu tried to swallow. Really, he did, because he wasn’t going to let Peter try that stunt twice. But the purple crud coated his tongue and caught in his throat and the taste of it was so sweet his teeth ached. He almost got it down before it and everything else that might have been left came back up in a burbling gush. 

It was purple.  _ Everything _ was a lurid, foamy purple: the spreading stain on Peter’s shirt, the little puddle in his nest, the stuff dripping from his mouth and nose…

“ _ EW _ !” Peter bellowed, and bailed off the nest entirely. He was out of the room before Yondu could so much as move to a cleaner, drier part of the nest. 

 

When Kraglin showed up with the back of Peter’s neck pinched hard between his fingers, Yondu had shuffled all the nest scraps and blankets that had gotten puked on into a heap and shoveled them off the edge of his nest platform. Any clothing with purple on it had been similarly rejected.

“Clean it up,” Kraglin ordered, letting Peter go and giving him a shove into the middle of the room. “All of it.”

“But I-”

“ _ Now _ .”

Peter obeyed, hauling fabric out of the room while Kraglin bent over Yondu with a sigh. “Knew sendin’ him weren’t the  _ best _ idea, but I din’t think he could flark it up  _ this _ bad. Doc sent somethin’ else for you, seein’ as how that purple stuff don’t seem to agree with you.”

Yondu belched at him and rolled onto his other side, cautiously cradling his aching belly and muffling another unnervingly wet burp against the back of his free hand. 

“You gotta take it. But it ain’t purple, and it-” He snatched the bucket off the side of the nest as soon as he saw Yondu’s shoulders heave, hanging it over his captain’s shoulder and rolling his eyes while Yondu heaved up a splatter of thin purple fluid. “Anyhow, it ain’t…. _ that _ color and it ain’t like the old stuff in any other way either an’ she says if it don’t suit you then you’ll hafta stay down there with her. So you had better keep it down.”

Yondu snarled a few curses at him and turned back onto his side, cringing at the slick feeling left on his lips and teeth. Another belch, this one sickly sweet, worked it’s way up his throat. 

Kraglin reached over him with water and waved it in front of his face until he snatched at it. 

“Rinse ‘n spit ‘fore you spew again from the aftertaste,” Kraglin advised. “An’ then you’re takin’ this new stuff.”

Yondu argued some, but by then he was too exhausted to care enough for a real fight. When Kraglin finally hauled him into a sitting position and pushed what looked like a shot glass full of something pink into his hand, he tossed it back, hoping that it might be easier to hold down if he didn’t taste it much. He was right, and what taste he did get was bright and vaguely fruity, hardly the gag-inducing sweetness of the previous treatment.

“There, that weren’t so bad,” Kraglin chuckled, trading the glass for more water. “Peter’s stayin’ in here for third shift, and you’ll take another dose when he says it’s time.”

“Quit givin’ me orders.”

“Soon as you’re back on your feet,” he said easily. “Get some rest, captain.”

* * *

 

 

When Peter came of age (more or less, depending on what planet or system you were in), he began joining the Ravagers in the bars, clubs and pleasure stops they frequented between jobs. Yondu paid for his first sexual experience at one of those pleasure stops, to make sure he learned proper how to please a partner. He wouldn’t have any boy raised under  _ his _ name getting a reputation for being bad in bed. 

With these excursions came the drinking and Peter’s first hangovers, which Yondu laughed at. But as he grew, his tolerance grew with him. And his growing involved a lot of getting taller and quite a bit of getting broader as well, and it ended with Yondu and Kraglin spending some nights all but chasing his suitors away. Letting him indulge them tended to end in angry lovers coming after him, which was dangerous during jobs and irritating at all other times.

One particular stop found Peter clean for a change and attracting suitors like flies to a rotting carcass. He was surrounded by beautiful bodies, some not-so-beautiful bodies, and a growing collection of drinks his admirers had bought him. 

And the Ravagers had a job the following day. Which meant getting Peter back on the ship in time for first and second shift to all get some rest. 

“We’re  _ leaving _ ,” Yondu informed him after Kraglin’s attempts to get Peter out had failed.

“I can’t. I have drinks to finish!”

Yondu eyed the rank of glasses on the counter and sighed. “Guess I’ll hafta help ya, then,” he murmured, then took the closest one- a double shot in a shade of electric orange- and tossed it back. 

“HEY!”

 

By the time they made it back to the  _ Eclector _ , Yondu had crossed well into ‘staggering drunk’ territory and was skirting the edges of ‘this ain’t fun anymore’. Peter was worse, barely upright as Yondu lead him and Kraglin minded them both. He shoved Peter into his cramped little cabin and went to struggle up into his nest. 

 

Come morning, Yondu had much less of hangover than he’d been expecting. Headache so bad he felt it pulsing under his fin? Check. Eyelids and limbs heavy with exhaustion? Check. Taste like death in his mouth? Double check. But the excessively violent puking was absent, and in it’s place an oppressive, clinging heat that had even his tropically-adapted body breaking out the drenching sweat and desire to pant.

But hey, he was upright and functional, which was better than he’d been expecting. 

Peter was, predictably, in the grip of a truly horrendous hangover and did little more than moan and wave a hand at the door when Yondu went to make sure he hadn’t died. Satisfied that they were clear to get to work, Yondu meandered up to the bridge. He had second shift, but he liked to be on hand for these things. 

Some time during first shift, his stomach started to hurt. Not queasy-like, just pain that eventually melded with the feverish hangover heat and the headache into one overall misery. It started to compound into burbling nausea near the end of first shift, leaving him to muffle sour burps in his hand before someone made a comment he’d have to beat them for.

The shift change alarm sounded, and Yondu jumped, startled out of his daze by the noise. He opened his mouth to defend himself at once, expecting to have been caught startling by the bridge crew, and was surprised by the sudden rush of fluid that flooded out instead of words. He’d hunched over, gagging on it and wondering what had  _ happened _ , before the shouts of the bridge crew got to his ears. Shouts of  _ worry _ and of  _ fear _ . Something about  _ him _ , even, and wasn’t that just the kind of sentiment he was always trying to scare out of them? It made no sense at all until the heaving eased a moment and he looked up enough to see the mess on his legs, seat and floor. 

There was blue in it, the bright, clear blue of his own blood. Quite a lot of it, even.

“Captain?” Where Kraglin had come from, he had no idea, but the gangly man was beside him as he slid from the chair to his hands and knees, shuddering under another retch. “Captain, what happened?”

Yondu knew what had happened. Only one thing could have, when he hadn’t set foot off the ship in weeks save for the visit to the pleasure stop the night before. And it was Peter’s drinks he had downed. 

“Check on the kid,” he choked. “ _ Now _ .”

 

By the time Kraglin jogged back with Peter staggering in his wake, someone had dragged Yondu out of the middle of the bridge and propped him against a bulkhead, where he slumped and tried not to choke on the periodic rushes of seemingly un-ending vomit that forced their way up his throat. There was a lot more blood in it than he was comfortable seeing. A bit of it was par for the course after that much drinking, that much puking, even eating sharp-shelled little things on some planets where they knew how to prepare such delicacies. But  _ this _ ...this wasn’t that sort of bleeding. His mouth and nose were full of the metallic tang of it. 

“ _ Yondu _ ?” Peter squeaked, and Yondu managed a snort. Here Peter was, a grown-ass man of twenty four and he still squeaked like a babe in the pouch when he was startled. Well, like most babies in the pouch. Yondu had been a whistler even before he’d had teeth. 

“‘Ve already called for the doc,” Kraglin assured them both. “I’ll...get...uh…”

“Ain’t so popular, are ya boy?” Yondu rasped at Peter.

“What?”

“Musta been  _ your _ poisoned drink ’ve got tearin’ holes in m’ gut.”

Peter turned an even more interesting color than he had been previously, making Yondu scoot sideways in case he was about to get thrown up on. He could handle his own puke just fine, but Peter had a gift for wide-spread, reeking, copious vomit that even the strongest stomachs were loathe to clean up afterwards. Must be a Terran thing. Faulty digestion or something.

“M-my?”

Yondu started to answer, but ended up pitching forward and heaving up another splatter of blue-tinged vomit instead. 

“We’d best meet Doc with him,” Kraglin decided. “Takes her an age t’ get all the way up here. C’mon Peter, get his arms. I’ll take th’ legs.”

They hefted Yondu between them and headed down towards medical as fast as they could.

 

Hours later, Yondu found himself sicker still, but in his own nest in his own cabin and, unfortunately, with both Kraglin and Peter in attendance. According to the doctor, who had had a great deal to say to Peter about leaving his drinks unattended and to Yondu for taking drinks from someone who had such a talent for pissing people off, it was just his luck that Terran biology differed from Centaurian enough to make the poison meant for Peter largely useless in him. Not entirely ineffective, unfortunately, but it wasn’t likely to have killed him. Now, with antitoxin in his bloodstream, it wouldn’t kill him at all.

He had a few moments where he wished it  _ would _ , though.

 

“See, what I don’t unnerstand is why it’s gotta be in  _ color _ ,” Kraglin remarked, handing Peter a plastic case that had once held spray-on casts and was now serving duty as a vomit receptacle. “Go clean that.”

“But I-”

“I said  _ go _ .” Peter went, and Kraglin turned back to Yondu with a fresh case. “Some days I think you might be more trouble ‘n he is,” he sighed. “Need ‘nother one?”

“ _ No _ ,” Yondu snapped, attempting to draw himself up into a more imposing position. Since his nest had been lowered halfway to the floor, this barely made him taller than Kraglin, and it stretched all the stiff, aching muscles of his core until they burned. “I do  _ not _ nee- _ hrrk _ !” He flailed urgently at Kraglin, who handed the case over and sighed. Yondu bent over it with a fluid hiccup and set to heaving up more fluid, though much less blue now. Doc claimed the thick, salty stuff she’d forced Yondu to gulp down would help heal the damage done to his insides, and the antitoxin in his blood would do the rest, but there was only one fast way to get the remaining poison out of his body, and  _ that _ was back the way it had come. 

“‘Bout done?” Kraglin asked. “Ain’t much comin’ now...you’ll need t’ drink again soon.”

“Flark that t’ Terra an’ back,” Yondu croaked. He cleared his throat, wincing, and spat, swatting at Kraglin when the man offered him a bottle. “Don’t  _ need _ that crap.”

“Yes you do. If ya keep trying to puke without the extra in your gut, you could tear yourself up even worse ‘n you already have. An’ you’ll be confined to quarters longer, an’  _ that _ means more work for me.”

“Selfish sonuvva Andromedan Orloni breeder.”

“That’s me,” he murmured, entirely unperturbed. He pushed the bottle closer to Yondu’s face. “Don’ make me get a funnel and sit on ya. ‘Cuz I will.”

The bottle contained a mixture of the thick, salty stuff the doctor had forced on him earlier and a thinner, sweeter liquid. It was red, making his vomit decidedly festive in appearance, and the purpose of it seemed to be to give him something largely harmless to hork back up. Strictly speaking, he knew that this was a blessing; he could- and had done it in the past- tear his esophagus if he retched too hard without something to bring up. But being forced to drink a bottle of the godforsaken brew every hour or so was a special kind of hell. 

“Your carrier must’ve dropped ya as a baby,” Yondu growled, snatching the bottle from Kraglin. He popped it open and began to drink before his tastebuds could talk him out of it.

“She did,” Kraglin chuckled. “Twice. I’ll getcha water t’ wash that down with.”

Yondu grunted at him and finished chugging the contents of the bottle. Drinking it so quickly made him feel bloated, heavy and even more nauseous, but it hardly mattered. It wasn’t meant to stay down- it was designed to be vomited back up with a minimum of injury. If he managed to get a little nutrition from it while it was still in him, that was a bonus. 

Kraglin traded him the empty bottle for some water, which Yondu sipped at mostly to keep Kraglin from nagging ihm. Worse than a carrier with too many grandbabies, he was. Always prodding and pestering and apparently looking out for his health. 

“Reckon we should send a ship back to that bar and look for whoever tried t’ kill Peter?” Kraglin asked. “Or call it a fluke?”

“Neither. Best to just...j-just…” Yondu swallowed hard, feeling the doctor’s slurry rising in his throat. “J-just  _ hrrp... _ wait, I...I-i-i... _ urrrrpp _ …”

Kraglin handed him the freshly cleaned case Peter had carried back in. “Why don’ we just wait for you t’ get  _ that _ over with…”

“I am  _ not _ gonna keep  _ doin’ _ this,” Yondu growled, voice tight. “ _ Can’t _ even...ev-ven... _ hllp!” _

“Sure you aren’t.”

Yondu ignored him, drooling over the case as he tried to keep his stomach’s contents where they belonged. He had been at this game for the better part of a full shift already and he had fought every single bout of vomiting. Not that it had done any good, but it had been an attempt and he felt better for it. At least he could still be a stubborn bastard. 

“‘Least you don’ got hair t’ pet puke in,” Kraglin pointed out. 

“He’s got no hair almost  _ anywhere _ ,” Peter muttered. 

“‘Course he don’t, whatcha want hair for in a jungle?”

“He’s a mammal,” Peter said stubbornly. “Mammals have hair and make milk.  _ Kids _ on Terra know  _ that _ .”

“He’s got some stubble. And he ain’t  _ from _ Terra. Got a pouch an’ four nips an’ everything.”

“Yeah, but... _ four nipples _ ?” Peter straightened up and stared hard at Yondu’s huddled form, trying to get a better look at his chest. “‘Ve only ever seen the two.”

“In his pouch. For babies.”

“....the flark are you, Yondu, some kinda kangaroo?”

Yondu attempted to say something appropriately biting in return, but it was lost under a rush of thick red vomit and he choked instead. 

 

It was a very long day ahead of him.

 

* * *

Kraglin groaned, letting his head fall back against the wall behind him. Taking a late trip to the showers hadn’t been on his list of intended activities, but one look at the crush of bodies occupying it earlier had convinced him to steer clear. They had access to Xandar’s off-planet facilities for a few more days before their welcome was officially over, which meant access to plenty of clean water and no limit on bathing, something most of the crew took shameless advantage of. 

Granted, as First Mate he could have chased people from the showers until he had one of the shower heads all to himself, but waiting was easier. And Yondu had chased a bunch of them out earlier, if the whining in the mess was any indicator. Yondu didn’t like sharing showers with many people, something Kraglin suspected had to do with his pouch, a body part no one else on the ship possessed.No doubt someone would try what Kraglin had tried once, years ago, and pull at the edge of it to see if it could fill with water. It could, but was apparently very uncomfortable and a pain to empty and dry out, barring doing a handstand and shoving a towel up in it, so it was safest for everyone on the ship if nobody was tempted.

But now, it was early in third shift and no one was in the showers except him. He had the luxury of the far corner, where a tall person- like him, and like Peter- could turn two shower heads to spray into the same space.  _ Bliss _ . 

Something- or more likely some _ one _ \- made a thudding scrabbling sort of noise at the door, which on that level of the crew and life decks had gotten a little out of alignment and tended to stick, requiring a firm yank to the side as it opened. 

“Gotta pull!” Kraglin yelled in the general direction of the door. When the scrabbling continued, he heaved a sigh and went to pull the door himself. Probably one of their newest members, someone who hadn’t learned the tricks of getting around things that weren’t enough of a pain to actually repair and who was also likely to be staggering drunk.

He grabbed the edge of the door in a wet hand, smacked the pad to open it, and gave a firm yank towards the opposite side. It screeched, then opened smoothly in time for the person on the other side to dive in, hitting Kraglin amidships and bowling him into his back on the cold plating. The intruder landed on him, arms and legs scrabbling for purchase.

Kraglin wheezed, trying to catch a breath, and realized that it was  _ Yondu _ on top of him, still fighting to untangle himself from Kraglin’s gangly, slippery limbs. Usually the captain was fairly coordinated, and he’d been relatively uninjured during the fight on Xandar. Right now, though, he was stripped down to his pants and  _ one _ boot, with sweat beading on skin that had a worrying tinge of grey to it, and he looked frantic.

Yondu made a wet gurgling noise right about the same time that Kraglin figured out what was going on and started to struggle in earnest, which did about as much good as one might expect. 

He managed perhaps twenty seconds of struggle before Yondu puked. 

 

Later, when the mess was cleaned up and Kraglin had had enough alcohol and sleep and time to think about it all objectively, it was probably the most spectacular puke he’d ever seen from Yondu. The volume, for one, was probably record-breaking; if Kraglin had to venture a guess, he’d say Yondu had had a couple of good meals under his belt that day. The force was another- Yondu was the most apathetic puker Kraglin knew of, which was why he was always in such a hurry to get in a position where his mouth  _ wasn’t _ over the rest of his body, because he’d end up wearing everything otherwise. This time, though, there was a lot of force behind it, which meant the backsplash reflected off Kraglin’s chest was both considerable and widespread. Judging by the bright bits of color, Yondu had been at the myriad food vendors in the Xandarian station stop they were docked at. And it all  _ reeked _ ...at least inasmuch as Yondu’s vomit ever did.

The splattering flood of half-digested….whatever gave Kraglin all the excuse he needed to buck Yondu right off and scramble back into the showers on all fours. It wasn’t until he was sure it was safe to open his mouth that it occurred to him that he’d left Yondu on the floor around the corner, and that Yondu hadn’t followed him. 

Creeping back, he found Yondu on hands and knees, though from the looks of things his shaking arms were about to give way. Then they  _ did _ , and Kraglin had to make a dive to keep his captain from face-planting right into his own sick, which was probably on the list of things first mates were supposed to protect their captains from.

“What’s wrong  _ now _ ?” he demanded, heaving his captain’s dense body upright and heading for the showers. Yondu might have been shorter than him, but he was much more heavily muscled and something about his biology made that muscle denser than average, which just added to his weight. Sweaty and splattered with vomit, and with Kraglin’s hands and arms wet from the shower, he was very hard to hold onto without his jacket for gripping. Not for the first time, Kraglin wished Yondu had  _ hair _ , which would make for some texture he could get a better hold of. 

Yondu hiccuped. “ _ Sick _ ,” he groaned. 

“Oh really? Hadn’t noticed at all, captain, thanks for letting me know,” Kraglin drawled, hauling Yondu into the corner where the shower was still running. He didn’t want to think about how hard it would be to get Yondu out of his pants (and that single, inexplicable boot) when they were soaked through. 

“Food was off, maybe,” Yondu coughed, then leaned forward under the spray to heave up another rush of vomit. Kraglin wiped scraggly hair out of his own eyes and dropped into a crouch. Clearly he’d have to wait until Yondu was done puking before he could be useful. 

“Well, Captain, ‘least it ain’t Peter’s fault this time.”


End file.
